Escape.
Some people view work as a prison from which the only escape is a lottery win, retirement or a wealthy aunt. For others, work is the escape, and not from something but to relevance, or collaboration, or a state of mind.
Tropical Forest with Monkeys. Henri Rousseau. 1910. Oil on canvas. John Hay Whitney Collection, National Gallery of Art.
Organizational health is (still) the key to long-term performance
McKinsey: Organizational health refers to how effectively leaders “run the place”—that is, how they make decisions, allocate resources, operate day to day, and lead their teams with the goal of delivering high performance, both near term and over time. Organizational health comprises three elements: how well the entire organization rallies around a common vision and strategy, how well the organization executes its strategy, and how well the organization innovates and renews itself over time.
Work and value creation
Gautam Mahajan: Work can be necessary or relevant. The most useful is necessary and relevant work. The most useless is unnecessary and irrelevant work, and very often we practice it, and companies do so unknowingly. In between is necessary and irrelevant work or unnecessary and relevant work.
Dispatch from 1765
Dwayne Yancey: There is some dispute about what, exactly, Henry said. There is no written record of remarks, so we must rely on secondhand accounts. By some of those, Henry rose “in a voice of thunder and with the look of a god” as he railed against not just Parliament but, most shockingly, King George III himself — and referenced the assassinations and executions of dictators through history: “Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third —” Henry paused for dramatic effect and was shouted down by Speaker Robinson: “Treason!” Others in the chamber joined with their own cries of “Treason!” Henry seemed unconcerned. He is said to have stared right at the speaker and continued: “— may profit from their example.” Henry then added, defiantly: “If this be treason, make the most of it.”
We need home economics now more than ever
Ashlie D. Stevens: As the economy, as well as the way we transmit generational knowledge, shifts, younger Americans need help beyond TikTok and Reddit for learning how to budget, meal plan and shop, all skills traditionally taught in home economics. As Susan Turgeson, president of the Association of Teacher Educators for Family and Consumer Sciences told NPR in 2018: “Everything about FCS is really teaching resource management and employability skills, creative and critical thinking — we just do it through food.”
The surprising story of the ten bison roaming Golden Gate Park
Visit California: Bison in the wild eat mostly grasses, using their shaggy heads to clear the snow in the winter. The bison in the park had everything they needed, but this didn’t keep them from breaking out semi-frequently in the 1990s. One San Francisco Chronicle headline called the bison “chaotic escape artists.” Twenty-five escaped on July 23, 1924, when a large male named Portland charged the fence. The herd scattered and wandered around the city for almost an entire day, trampling on yards and eating flowers. One woman called the police to report a herd of elephants had broken loose. According to a contemporaneous article in the Scranton, Pennsylvania Time-Tribune, “It was a great night for the children.” Don’t expect the same kind of excitement today – there hasn’t been a reported escape attempt since 1995.